On December 8, 2022, the President of the Republic was concerned about the low vaccination coverage of adolescents against human papillomavirus (HPV) infections. He said on this subject that he wanted “go fast” et “do a huge amount of information work right from school”, without excluding the possibility of making the Gardasil vaccine mandatory. Visiting a college in Charente, this Tuesday, March 1, Emmanuel Macron calls for a vaccination campaign ”widespread” 5th graders (11-13 years old). An eagerness that questions, while a class action (Editor’s note: collective legal action) is initiated in the United States: its plaintiffs accuse the Merck laboratory of having exaggerated the benefits of Gardasil and concealed proven side effects.
Four days before World Awareness Day around diseases induced by the human papillomavirus, Emmanuel Macron puts on his doctor’s costume.
Ongoing trial across the Atlantic
“From next school year, for all 5th graders, we will generalize vaccination” against HPV, he said during a meeting with students in a college in Jarnac (Charente). According to the President of the Republic, “It helps prevent a lot of cancers. Many countries have done it”.
Many countries have done it but some are seriously starting to come back. The United States has been witnessing since last month the opening of a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical laboratory Merck (MSD).
Following the registration of a collective legal action in October 2022, the plaintiffs want to obtain compensation for serious, and sometimes even fatal, side effects attributed to the Gardasil 9 vaccine, the same one frequently recommended by the French President.
According to them, these adverse effects would have been minimized by the manufacturer. As for the real benefits of the vaccine in terms of protection against various cancers following an STI (sexually transmitted infection), they would have been exaggerated.
An effectiveness that is struggling to be scientifically demonstrated
HPVs are the most common STI. During their lifetime, almost 80% of people are confronted with this virus. However, in about 90% of cases, according to the High Authority for Health (HAS), its disappearance is effective in less than 24 months, without consequences for health.
Certainly, if the infection persists, the evolution of a precancerous lesion (dysplasia) towards a cancer of the floor of the uterus remains possible. But with 0.7% of infections degenerating into cancer, this risk is rare and occurs after an average delay of 30 years.
Thus, the vaccine only benefits from a particularly small “window of opportunity” to demonstrate its effectiveness. And the proven presence of side effects could very quickly tip the risk-benefit balance in the wrong direction.
This is not the first time that the effectiveness of the vaccine has been controversial after a particularly flattering presentation by politicians or learned societies.
Plan de communication
In 2019, several of them launched the call for 50, a communication campaign that offered “universal screening and vaccination against the papillomavirus”.
This appeal painted a dramatic picture of the risk run by young people and advocated “to increase the vaccination coverage of the populations already targeted by actively restoring scientific truth and therefore confidence in these active and very well tolerated vaccines”.
An opinion which is not shared today by the American plaintiffs in lawsuit against Merck. After studying 48 victim files, the judge noted a homogeneity of health problems, both among men and women.
In response to the call for 50, around 15 medical professionals fought back at the time. They had recalled together the state of science, medical ethics and the precautionary principle in the face of this vaccination.
Quoted in an article in Paris Match on April 30, 2019, signed by journalist Vanessa Boy-Landry, hospital pharmacist Amine Umlil then said:
“The communication of the appeal of the 50 was neither objective nor non-misleading. It did not present the risk in perspective of the expected benefit and did not mention any uncertainties, as required by the Public Health Code and the communication rules recalled in 2018 by the Medicines Agency.
Sensitive chord
Doctors had also vigorously challenged the naive vision of a vaccine presented as a “miracle solution”. According to them, the appeal of the 50 was only a “lobbying operation” who remained “in the magical thinking of a revolutionary product that is not”.
In another article published by Paris Match on January 11, 2019, Vanessa Boy-Landry interviewed Catherine Riva, another journalist, founder of the Re-check collective. It stated:
“The best available data indicate that vaccination will not have the expected effect. The results of the clinical trials reveal that there is no statistically significant difference in efficacy between vaccinated girls not carrying the HPVs targeted by the vaccine and those in the placebo group. Vaccinated girls no longer have precancerous lesions associated with HPV 16 and 18, but they still do the same!”
Emmanuel Macron, however, played on December 8, during a press conference in Fontaine-le-Comte, on the sensitive chord. He described the urgency to vaccinate adolescents: “For a young person, if their parents say not to get vaccinated, it may be too late.” And warned about the low vaccination coverage: “We’re behind on that.”
Comments to be related to another analysis by Catherine Riva:
“To brandish vaccination coverage as a sacred objective (…) is grotesque, untenable from a scientific point of view, and shocking: these vaccines are administered to a young population, a priori in perfect health, to prevent the occurrence of a disease that we already prevent with the smear screening. Under these conditions, the question of whether these products are safe is absolutely crucial and there is nothing obscurantist in asking it”.
The first judgments in the Gardasil case across the Atlantic were initially to be rendered in September 2023. Either as Emmanuel Macron said, “at the next school year”the date from which the Head of State wishes to see applied “the generalization of vaccination”.